In conjunction with the release of iOS 5, Apple last week released “Find My Friends”, a new app which enables iPhone users to track the location of friends who have agreed to share their location data with a trusted group of people.

When Apple introduced the feature at their iPhone 4S media event, some of the use-cases proffered included finding friends when meeting up at the beach and tracking the location of road-tripping friends coming to see you to make sure they haven’t veered off course.

But with location sharing comes a number of important privacy issues. To this end, Find My Friends only works when a user agrees to share his/her location information.

But what happens when an iPhone toting user isn’t aware that his/her location is being shared?

Such was the case with a New York man who got his wife an iPhone 4S and enabled location sharing. Upon tracking her, he found her outright lying about her whereabouts, confirming his earlier suspicions that she was cheating on him – thought that point is purely circumstantial.

He posted the following synopsis on a MacRumors forum thread.

I got my wife a new 4s and loaded up find my friends without her knowing. She told me she was at her friends house in the east village. I’ve had suspicions about her meeting this guy who lives uptown. Lo and behold, Find my Friends has her right there.

I just texted her asking where she was and the dumb b!otch said she was on 10th Street!! Thank you Apple, thank you App Store, thank you all. These beautiful treasure trove of screen shots going to play well when I meet her a$$ at the lawyer’s office in a few weeks.

And next he provides some screenshots along with some additional commentary:

this girl is so dumb….I just hope I can keep cool and not let on that I know

she said she is in meat packing district which is on 12th street. I DONT THINK SO. Appreicate the support. not my finest hour here but going to get better soon.

And let the meat packing jokes commence!

Now the whole thread could have certainly been faked but it seems like a lot of trouble to go through for nothing.

Lesson of the day? If someone gets you an iPhone, make sure you check the location settings!

I think her lawyer could easily keep this out depending on if it can be shown she was duped into violating her own privacy. Giving someone something that includes tracking they haven’t themselves opted in for without their knowledge sounds legally dubious. If this stands up in court, it could cause precedent for large-scale invasion of privacy attempts.

“Lesson of the day? If someone gets you an iPhone, make sure you check the location settings!” or, just maybe, be honest in your relationships? If you’re no longer in love with someone, tell them before cheating on them?!

“spying shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re doing the wrong thing” is a crappy argument. Really seriously slippery slope stuff. Also he sounds like a suspicious dude who is already convinced that she is cheating on him with this guy uptown. If he has already been hassling her I don’t blame her for saying she was downtown.

On the other hand, she may well have been cheating. Cheating doesn’t justify spying. Separate wrongs.

Fruit of the poisoned tree is a more geared towards criminal cases, and your Fourth amendment rights. I’m not a lawyer, but I doubt how the info was obtained has *any* effect on this dude’s forthcoming divorce case.

Nothing the man did was illegal to track her, he bought the phone and put the software on when it was still his. Also there’s precedent that gps tracking is not invasion of privacy if you have partial ownership.

You say the thing was probably not faked because why would someoe go through all the trouble? Really? Welcome to the internet. IT is FILLED with posts from lonely, lonely people who fake shit just becuase they know it will make people pay attention to them for a few minutes…for the first time in their lives.

Google Latitude which is available on any Android phone has had this exact same feature for years so don’t credit Apple for this “invention”.

Also if you thought your wife was cheating on you, you should have just confronted her. There are many tell tale signs. Also you could have followed her *in person* instead of being a wussy and hiding behind a phone screen, then you could have seen her face and kicked the guys ass. If she was cheating, you probably gave her a reason, maybe being too controlling and a psycho? Also who lets his wife stay out until 1 am without them especially when he thinks shes cheating. You are the idiot sir, embarrassing yourself and her all over the interwebs.

Dude, seriously. If this is legit, use it to “bump into them” somewhere & just don’t say u tracked her. I know it makes u feel smart & superior to throw it
in her face, but she’ll just disable it & it will cause problems you don’t need.

I caught my ex cheating in a similar way (she was indeed cheating so doing hate). I used an app “run keeper” where you can track your bike rides adn view your history online on the computer. I left my phone in my ex’s car under her seat. Saw she kept going to this one location on Wed night where she would always vansih for hours. Sure enough i was right. She was at the guys house I was suspicious of. I knocked on the door and he came to the door in nothing but a towel while she was inside. Take in mind she had tol me they didnt even communicate whatever at all at this point. She obviously confessed at that point and I kicked her ass our of my house. We lived together. I’m lucky I didn’t catch a disease from her sharing her damn vag all over town with dog knows who else. Creepy to do these things? I call it self defense. She was with him for 8 months behind my back. Took me that long to catch on and finally do something about it. She obviously wasn’t going to admit to it.

If he paid for the phone, and is paying for the phone usage (key part) it will be admissible because he owns it.

People have been doing this a while with vehicles. If you own the car, are making payments on the car, or the car is registered to you, you can tag it with a GPS and it will be admissible in both criminal and civil court.

I.E. it is not illegal for you to track your own property.

I do not miss the hours of phones calls and paperwork making sure we could legally tag cars back in the day.

Couple of things…
If you suspected her of cheating, why in the world would you buy such an expensive phone for her?
Did she get to keep the phone?
And, don’t you know that if you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it.

He didn’t wait even a minute before texting her a second and third time? Sometimes I don’t notice I got a text for half an hour or an hour. And even if I do if I’m in a conversation with a friend I’m not going to just take my phone out and start reading my texts. This story sounds fishy. Either that or this guy’s really rude and drove her away.

Lots of people pointing out wiretapping law, and privacy laws and such. However I believe since he purchased the phone, more than likely in his name and on his contract he should be legally allowed to track the location of his own phone through a service he pays for. Also, privacy/wiretapping laws in my area only account for audible recordings up until last year, stating that public workers and citizens in public should never have the illusion that they have privacy in public places. The second she left the house and entered public domain with HIS phone that HE pays for, law went out the window.

Don’t cheat on your spouse, are you guys joking?? if you even think your spouse is cheating on you then either you have major issues yourself and should not be in a relationship, or you need to get rid and move on.

Not to mention if you have to tracking your spouse to proove they are cheating they obviously do not want you! having said that they should have the decency to leave you first but hell they are only human too!

Also, this post does not say but he could have left the part out where was cheating too. Not saying its right but usually more to the story than just one person cheating. Perhaps he was rubbish in bed!

If he paid for the phone and it’s in his name then legally SHE is using HIS phone so no violation of privacy, “wiretapping” or “fruit of the poisoned tree” issues. The Find my Friends setting are not covert and easily accessible. Even if parental controls lock out turning it off, you still see that location tracking is on.
Since this would be civil and not criminal, even if he had “wiretapped” her, that could still be used in his divorce case (although she may be able to sue for breaching her privacy). This is basically the same as getting a P.I. to follow her.

Slightly troubled about the perceived “privacy right” to cheat on your spouse .Each time a new iPhone comes out, it’s a slight improvement over the last.Let’s go down the memory lane and figure out the people and technology.http://goo.gl/L89ss

Some of you posting here are crazy!!! It’s the guy’s wife!! A life long promise to have no secrets and to be faithful. What has this world gone to that people think it’s ok to disobey God’s instructions?? How is he violating her privacy?? The Bible says that when a man and a woman are married that they are to leave their patents and that the 2 shall become 1 flesh.

What a dick. He knows nothing for certain. What if she meant 10th Avenue, which runs right into the Meatpacking District? What if she screwed up and said 10th instead of 12th? What if she had a couple of drinks?

No matter how low anyone has to go through to discover his/her spouse cheat, it is nothing compare to the cheater has done to damage their marriage live, again DON’T CARE why he/she cheated. Not happy with your marriage, get off the bed, out of the house, find a lawyer, get over with and set the other half free. The least decency thing to do, you know.